Jamie
You ready to get X-treme!? When an extreme sports film crew stumbles upon the hiding spot of a war criminal high in the Alps they must use all their X-treme skillz to escape. Can they escape, beat the baddies, and maybe get the girl before it’s too late? Find out in… Extreme Ops.
If you’ve seen the movie and are feeling Xtreme you can test just how Xtreme you are by taking the Extreme Ops Xtreme Pop Quiz (Hot Shot)! I’m basically an Xtreme savant, so don’t fret if you don’t get them all. Back to this Xtreme recap!
How?! An X-treme commercial film crew is x-tremely excited to go to Austria and film a new skiing and snowboarding commercial. Unfortunately their producer has promised a real life avalanche will be used in the filming and a real life olympic gold medalist will make an appearance. Oh no! The most dangerous stunt of their lives and they got a total n00b in here! When they make their way to Austria a couple of the particularly X-treme crew members get in trouble with their hotel leading to them staying in a partially finished resort at the top of a mountain. Unbeknownst to them a war criminal is hiding there after faking his own death. While they film and make fun of the Olympian for totes being terrible at skiing, the war criminal gets wind of their presence. Oh no! Confronted by armed mad men on the mountain they stage an avalanche that results in the death of the war criminal’s son. Double oh no! They attempt a daring escape but are pinned in a crevasse by the baddies. The next morning they make their way out and blow up the bad guy’s helicopter. This explosion causes an avalanche that the Olympian successfully skis away from, fulfilling the requirements of the commercial they were creating. Back home their commercial is a great success and they all swear to never reveal the dark secrets of their past and how they killed a war criminal but they are fine with it because it’s fine… it’s fine… it’s totally fine… I’m fine… I SAID IT’S FINE! Oh and the main character gets the girl, duh. THE END.
Why?! The war criminal has faked his death because he was going on trial at the International Court. Like any good war criminal he pretends to be flying to his trial but blows up the plane that he actually wasn’t on. He then heads to the unfinished resort atop an Austrian mountain top to wait out a plot to blow up the court and then allow for the heat to die down. His discovery and accidental filming by the crew requires that he kill them to preserve his secret. The film crew really does only want to make a commercial. They seem like consummate professionals and really good at their jobs and we get an inordinate amount of commercial filming shop top given that this is a film about X-treme athletes escaping from a crazed war criminal.
What?! Just to really hammer home where this film was meant to take place we get an entire scene of our heroes getting extreme with a drunken game of truth and dare while chugging bottle upon bottle of sweet, sweet Edelweiss.
Who?! Not many actors to highlight but perhaps a hint of Planchet in both the producer (who is derided hard by the entire film crew despite being “the boss”) and Will, who spends the film trying to get with the lady of the crew only to be made fun of as a chubby loser at every turn… that is until he parachutes off a cliff to save everyone’s life. For real.
Where?! Austria babbbb-yyyy. Everywhere you look this film screams Austria. The back of the DVD, wikipedia, imdb synopsis, etc. etc. etc. Even if you had none of that you still have them saying that they are in Austria like 5000 times and doing everything Austrian they can find. It is still slightly strange when they have an orgy on a pile of wiener schnitzel. I was into it, but a bit heavy handed (is that real? You’ll just have to watch Extreme Ops and find out). A.
When?! I went back through and didn’t find even a little hint at the timing. They even had a perfect opportunity with a close up of a newspaper but chose not to. Too bad Extreme Ops because that gives you an… F.
I found the first half of the film to be oddly technical with large parts of the film spent discussing how they were going to get a shot, how hard it would be to teach the Olympic skier to ski, and trying to coordinate the shooting schedule. It was very informative, but odd for a purported thriller. The only thrills they gave us were rididididiculous wire-aided stunts that mostly just looked funny. Then there was a thirty minute section in the middle that was a surprisingly well done survival thriller as the extreme athletes used their skillz to avoid capture and certain death. Fortunately for us right when I could have been like, “you know what? I’m digging this,” It threw us an ending that was just flat out stupid looking. Fun BMT film. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! When you’re all out of Mountain Dew and you have a few terrorists to handle who do you call? The extreeeeeme operations (ops for short) obviously. They’ll get it done and look gnarly doing it bro. Let’s get into it.
The Good – I thought when you actually watched people snowboarding and skiing the film was pretty cool. Like, you actually get to see people going down some incredible powder (broooo, alright I’ll stop) and it is … well it is like a documentary and that is actually pretty fine. I cared about all of the characters as well, which is stunning, and was quite glad that they decided not to kill anyone off … would have put a damper on their commercial too if they had. The vistas though, the vistas!!!
Ps View on the Preview – So we are recording a test episode for a Bad Movie Twins podcast today (exciting stuff for the one person who reads this far, hi Lou!) and for that we rewatched the BMT classic Getaway. And like Getaway, which is injecting a film directly into the veins of gearheads, I was most intrigued to see how they served up what would be, nowadays, a direct-to-VOD film exclusively for extreme sports enthusiasts. Plus, it came out the same year as xXx, so seeing how much of a knock off of that weirdly entertaining film this was would be interesting as well.
The Bad – Well it is a knock off, and the terrorist plot line is just gloriously ludicrous. The acting is terrible, and it is pretty stunning that they apparently sunk this amount of money into a film which was basically guaranteed not to make its money back. The CGI was absolutely horrible, as were the accents. But if you can look past all of that … the movie is actually not half bad. As crazy as that sounds. I make fun of the budget, but considering the success of xXx I really shouldn’t. You definitely need someone like Vinny D piloting your film if you expect to make a $40 million budget back, that’s just common sense. But really the biggest crime? Well, I think this needs its own coined phrase.
Sklogcabulary Quiz – Wire-faux (n.) – Applying high wire acrobatics to replace a film’s actual stunts in something other than a kung fu movie.
We make fun of it when it is done in a kung fu movie, but in an extreme sports film? It just looks crazy and makes no sense. I’m here to watch some people cut that sweet powder (brooo, alright, this time I’ll really stop), so having them flip around on obvious high wires is just … disappointing.
The BMT – I liked this movie in a weird way, it was very BMT. If it didn’t have the weird wire-fu though it would just be a borderline direct-to-DVD garbage film, but with it it is kind of special. I wonder how many genres have been Wire-fu-ified. Like … historical actioner in The Musketeer has very strange acrobatic action scenes I remember. Now that is a movie I’m interested to see.
StreetCreditReport.com – I think this flew under the radar a bit because it is so low budget. I found a blog which had it third worst of the year right above Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (which is impressive). And this possibly fake extreme sports blog mentions it among the worst extreme sports films (along with Gleaming the Cube and Surf Ninjas which is genuinely impressive). So street cred in the extreme sports genre, but not for bad films of 2002 in general it seems.
No homework here either.
Cheerios,
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